Personally I think that's the appeal of the series, but it does make me wonder if that's also why the series got less appealing over time, because that tone doesn't lend itself well to the more complex tales people expected out of games after a certain point. I don't think most people remember anything past Legend with much fondness, and even that game is pretty controversial (as well as being the pinnacle of obtuse gaming systems via its damn near unexplained forging system).

To be fair, a lot of what happened to the Mana series lies in the way Squeenix grossly mishandled that and every other non-FF/DQ IP from their pre-Squeenix days.

Legend had some pretty deep facets to it, but a lot of it was buried under SaGa levels of obtuse discovery, and it took itself as more of a side-story at that point in history which made it a poor successor to the SuperNES era games. Then Sword happened where the game went absolutely nowhere in spite of all the reams of text added to the hacked up remains of Adventure's plot & game structure because most of it was dedicated to trying to build a continuity between the series, which never really existed in the first place (on top of the devs making the brilliant decision of having Secret happen in the far future, which meant that nothing ever really referenced that game aside from the stuff that SD3 took from it, and instead made almost all of the references towards SD3, which nobody outside of Japan actually played without getting into emulation, along with Legend's loose plotlines suddenly getting elevated to series critical status, which continues to sit at odds with everything else). And then World of Mana made everything worse due to building Dawn's plot on top of Legend's plot while completely fucking it up, with Children being set shortly thereafter despite it coming out first, and also completely fucking it up due to not being able to actually reference anything beyond the staples, which Dawn fucked up, which led to a number of plot holes and continuity errors. While Heroes basically built itself on the back of SD3, which again, few people outside of Japan had actually played, nevermind it being a prequel with nothing really to do with the original game's plot beyond a bunch of callbacks. Something, something, Friends of Mana, something.

And yeah, there's definitely a surreal effect going on with the earlier game's plots. Adventure is basically some kind of 80s/early 90s anime OVA plot and in all that it implies. Secret, despite the utter genericness of its plot, is a mixture of weird and goofy tangents

(all of your party's stated goals are either failed or met with some kind of tragic outcome; Randi mets his mother in her final moments, Primm helps to save her fiance from a fate worse than death by helping him kill himself, and Popoie recovers his memory and returns home to find it in ruins with only his grandfather still alive, the party fails from stopping the revival of the Mana Fortress and saving it costs them both Flammie and Popoie).

And SD3's plot is probably the overall weakest due to running three relatively similar storylines concurrently and lacks the morbidity of Secret's plot to help define it past that era.

The other major problem with the series is the fact that it never really evolved past the SuperNES/Famicom era. Legend's gameplay was incredibly shallow despite the forging (it was basically a more stat-driven River City Ransom). Sword was a clusterfuck formed from mashing together all of the gameplay mechanics from the previous games despite none of it fitting together all that well. Children was a randomly generated dungeon crawler (the worst kind of RPG design outside of MMOGrinding and Gacha Hell), with a very badly forced multiplayer mechanic. Dawn's legendarily bad Unreal Physics gameplay needs no further exposition, and Heroes had a really shoddy RTS design complete with many of the genre's failings (bad pathfinding, Hero units who rendered most grunts as little more than fodder, etc), along with that particular brand's own failings (like Hero units who were constantly falling behind the powercurve and required bending over backwards to try to combat).

Also, those of you who are complaining about Secret's graphics are in for a real shock with SD3. Despite the Unity feeling that this remake has to it, Secret's design aesthetic was incredible nearly 25 years ago, and that still shows through now. Despite having superior hardware and techniques to make it with, SD3 never really reached Secret's level of design. SD3 looked better than Secret on the Super Famicom, but I doubt it'll do the same when they get around to remaking it.

I would love to hear how the pure land theme is going to sound and i'll be honest as mentioned before i'm going to get it probably day one too bad it's digital only for us though but oh well. I grew up with this game I was 9 when it came out. I also watched a stream saying that it's going to be only local co-op multiplayer which I never played when I was young since I didn't have the multi-tap.

I would love to hear how the pure land theme is going to sound and i'll be honest as mentioned before i'm going to get it probably day one too bad it's digital only for us though but oh well. I grew up with this game I was 9 when it came out. I also watched a stream saying that it's going to be only local co-op multiplayer which I never played when I was young since I didn't have the multi-tap.

I'm most looking forward to Mandala, the Sunken Continent, the Mana Fortress and the Final Two Boss Fights' tracks (Pure Land is up there though along with Ice Country). Kinda annoying that the trailer cuts out right before Randi gets banished as that has two of the best tracks of the game right there (along with the Mana Tree and Mana Beast Attack segments for those in the know). At least, from what it looks like, it looks pretty faithful to the original (especially the mini-map; although Randi should've gotten up from his fall by Handspringing dammit). Plus, we know that Chest Throwing and the 4x item limit are still in effect (I wished they had gone shopping dammit; dat Item Ring).

More screenshots, including the item ring (though its lacking the AI option). Lets hope they have an option to alter the background of the status screen because I much prefer the scrolling forest background over a darkened screen.

Hoping that claim that it'll be local co-op only won't be true. It seems like such a no-brainer feature for the game to have even if it's clunky to implement (given that the screen's always centered on Randi and characters can get stuck- but that's not too hard to fix).

Mickeymack92I'll be on it. And yeah, I thought it looked fine. They adapted the sprites to 3D fairly faithfully. What more did you guys want?

Prime MoverNo real problems with the art style.

Spoony MageI'm not getting the hate for the designs, though.

HathenI think they reproduced the original artstyle pretty well and to me that's more important.

The listed users above pretty much voiced how I personally feel about the visuals. But I'm still going to gather more info on the game even after it's release to see if i truly want to immediately purchase it.

My brother and I had a blast with the SNES original... so let's see how this remake stacks up.

I missed this game growing up and I do want to play it but the art style looks bad in a mobile games kind of way. I might just play the original when this drops. I prefer sprites over most visuals anyway.Will keep my expectations low since its Enix. I hope its good.

I missed this game growing up and I do want to play it but the art style looks bad in a mobile games kind of way. I might just play the original when this drops. I prefer sprites over most visuals anyway.Will keep my expectations low since its Enix. I hope its good.

As long as they don't mess around with it too much, it'll be alright. Sadly, games released in 1993 have become rather long in the tooth nowadays and the best way to play this particular game is with two other people (who you hopefully get along with, less you find yourself staring at the weapon select screen for excessive stretches of time as you and your buddies fight over who gets the Sword).

What I'm wondering is if they'll include all the random ass enemy animations for things like getting stunned/eating a critical hit (even boss monsters like the Fire Gigas would occasionally display a grimaced face) or even the random 'lose a turn' action like how those books would occasionally flip pages to something useless like a picture of a tropical beach/pron or those floaty eyeballs occasionally shedding tears (seriously, Secret has some weird and amazing shit running under the hood while a lot of games from that era were lucky to have anything more than an idle animation for the PC, and even now don't really do as much as they could).

There was a live stream yesterday. Totally in Japanese and littered with clips from both Secret and games decidedly less Mana-ish than Seiken Densetsu 2. They did discuss SoM's 'darkness swept the troubled development' and two new clips of the remake were shown (the Goblin Stew segment at least will be set to electric guitar riffs; no idea on whether every instance of Dwarf Village Matango music will be in the same butt-electronica; also the World Map has a whole lot more detail to it; even though the sparseness of the original version made it feel larger than it really was; sadly that feeling doesn't seem to be present in the remake).

So I went on a bit of a shopping spree yesterday and picked this up alongside other PS4 games like Horizon and Berseria.

Anyways, I'm currently doofing around in Elinee's Castle (or I was until the game crashed). Impressions so far include feeling that the redux tracks are rather hit and miss (the track that plays during the point where the people of Potos tells you to scram was overdone and has some mood dissonance now that it didn't have before; whereas the track that plays when the Elder tells Randi about his Randi's Mom enjoys a nice aural background to go with it), but thankfully you can also switch between the two tracks at flick of a switch.

As for those of you who are worried about facing Spikey Tiger again, fear not. The game now has an Easy Mode (well, its less of a mode, so much as its an option to allow you to carry more items (up to 12).

Everything else is pretty faithful for the most part so far. Though perhaps some of the dialog is perhaps a bit too faithful. What changes I have seen have actually helped though since the dialogue involving Dyluck, Primm and her father makes their situation a little bit clearer. On that note, the alternate route is intact.

And for Easter Eggs, I've been spotting pictures of AoM characters like the MC, Bogard and Maurice scattered about.

So I went on a bit of a shopping spree yesterday and picked this up alongside other PS4 games like Horizon and Berseria.

Anyways, I'm currently doofing around in Elinee's Castle (or I was until the game crashed). Impressions so far include feeling that the redux tracks are rather hit and miss (the track that plays during the point where the people of Potos tells you to scram was overdone and has some mood dissonance now that it didn't have before; whereas the track that plays when the Elder tells Randi about his Randi's Mom enjoys a nice aural background to go with it), but thankfully you can also switch between the two tracks at flick of a switch.

As for those of you who are worried about facing Spikey Tiger again, fear not. The game now has an Easy Mode (well, its less of a mode, so much as its an option to allow you to carry more items (up to 12).

Everything else is pretty faithful for the most part so far. Though perhaps some of the dialog is perhaps a bit too faithful. What changes I have seen have actually helped though since the dialogue involving Dyluck, Primm and her father makes their situation a little bit clearer. On that note, the alternate route is intact.

And for Easter Eggs, I've been spotting pictures of AoM characters like the MC, Bogard and Maurice scattered about.

I have been hearing mixed feelings about it. I have never played the original and it sounds like I might just sit tight and wait for a sale later this year. My backlog is my main focus this year and if I pick this up for my Vita this fall, no sweat. It is a bummer to hear the OG fans of the game are disappointed with a lot of the game. Can't win them all I guess.

So I went on a bit of a shopping spree yesterday and picked this up alongside other PS4 games like Horizon and Berseria.

Anyways, I'm currently doofing around in Elinee's Castle (or I was until the game crashed). Impressions so far include feeling that the redux tracks are rather hit and miss (the track that plays during the point where the people of Potos tells you to scram was overdone and has some mood dissonance now that it didn't have before; whereas the track that plays when the Elder tells Randi about his Randi's Mom enjoys a nice aural background to go with it), but thankfully you can also switch between the two tracks at flick of a switch.

As for those of you who are worried about facing Spikey Tiger again, fear not. The game now has an Easy Mode (well, its less of a mode, so much as its an option to allow you to carry more items (up to 12).

Everything else is pretty faithful for the most part so far. Though perhaps some of the dialog is perhaps a bit too faithful. What changes I have seen have actually helped though since the dialogue involving Dyluck, Primm and her father makes their situation a little bit clearer. On that note, the alternate route is intact.

And for Easter Eggs, I've been spotting pictures of AoM characters like the MC, Bogard and Maurice scattered about.

I have been hearing mixed feelings about it. I have never played the original and it sounds like I might just sit tight and wait for a sale later this year. My backlog is my main focus this year and if I pick this up for my Vita this fall, no sweat. It is a bummer to hear the OG fans of the game are disappointed with a lot of the game. Can't win them all I guess.

I wont argue that getting this at $40 bux was a bit much, but for the most part, it seems like a decent update. Its not the remake that something like FE:Echoes received last year, but I haven't seen it cut down in any noticeable way so far (okay, other than the Cannon Travel not showing the party flying through the air, that was an unfortunate cut). Really, my only major complaint is the redone music sounding overdone more often than not.

Besides, you can still play this with 3 players (I haven't tried this yet). Additionally, if your party members do get stuck they won't keep you from advancing (although they also don't eventually run back to the party either; if someone gets caught on the level geometry, then they're stuck there; enemies spawn in faster and are generally more aggressive than in the original too so you can easily get someone clobbered to death if you're just darting through a high level area).